1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an object detection apparatus for detecting a target object from an input image with use of an image recognition dictionary.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, techniques are known for detecting a target object that is an object to be detected, such as a person or a vehicle present forward or rearward of a subject vehicle, use a recognition dictionary describing data representing features of the target object (an outline and other features thereof) to extract, from an input image captured by a camera or the like, an area having a high degree of similarity to the recognition dictionary.
In addition, techniques, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-181423, have been proposed for providing robust recognition by dividing a region to be recognized into a plurality of part regions, and for each part region, selecting an identification method among a plurality of identification methods and applying the selected method to the part region.
A target object, an object to be detected, may vary greatly in outline depending on viewing directions or may be deformed partially in outline depending on viewing directions. Particularly, for a human or the like that may differ greatly in appearance (such as colors, designs and figures) depending on hair styles, dress, postures, and moving directions and others, an enormous number of recognition dictionaries will be required to recognize the human in all the variations in his/her appearance.
In consideration of the foregoing, it would therefore be desirable to have techniques for more accurately detecting a target object having a higher appearance variance by image recognition processing.